[CF List] automake/libtool support

[Jacek Konieczny]

On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 08:19:40PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
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       Does automake prevent against human errors :)?
     
     It does it harder to make such mistakes. If it is properly written.

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       I'd like to see a Makefile.am of how one of the current makefiles would 
     
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       look in this new format so I could make a more educated opinion on whether 
     
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      it is worthwhile or not.
     
     I'll send an example Makefile.am for one of directories soon (probably not
the "lib/", because this is the hardest part :->)

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       Presumably, only the developers will need automake - my guess would be 
     
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       they modify the makefile.am, run automake, run configure (maybe autoconf 
     
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      first)?  But end users just type configure, make, correct?
     
     Yes. This is exactly how does it work.

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      >Libtool:
     
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      >- portable way of building and loading plugins
     
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      >... and probably some more
     
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       I'm a little wary of adding additional dependencies that end users must 
     
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       have in order to install/create.  Of course, you could do something like if 
     
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      libtool is available, then build the loader for plugins, and if not, then 
     
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      you have no plugin support.
     
     I don't thing user will need anything more than today. There is ltdl
library for portable loading of modules, but I think libtool may work
without it. So there will be no additional dependencies.

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       It's unclear why the current script code needs to be done as a loadable 
     
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      library instead of just compiling it in. 
     
     As I have said I am PLD packager. And one of our assumtions is to make
dependencies of binary packages minimal. With dynamically loadable
plugins it is easier: main crossfire-server package doesn't require
python to be installed, but if someone wants to, he can install
additional python-plugin packages. Python will be required then.

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      >Should I start?
     
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       See comments above.  If it makes the makefiles significantly simpler, I 
     
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      suppose so - I'm uncertain that it will really prevent the errors you are 
     
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      seeing however.
     
     I think they will not be seen so often.

Greets,
        Jacek